Joe Ely
Encyclopedia
Joe Ely is an American singer, songwriter and guitarist whose music touches on honky-tonk, Texas Country
, Tex-Mex
and rock and roll
.
He has had a genre-crossing career, performing with Bruce Springsteen
, Uncle Tupelo
, Los Super Seven
, The Clancy Brothers
and James McMurtry
in addition to his early work with The Clash
and more recent acoustic tours with Lyle Lovett
, John Hiatt
, and Guy Clark
.
and attended Monterey High School
.
In 1970, with fellow Lubbock musicians Jimmie Dale Gilmore
and Butch Hancock
, he formed The Flatlanders
. According to Ely, "Jimmie [Gilmore] was like a well of country music. He knew everything about it. And Butch was from the folk world. I was kinda the rock & roll guy, and we almost had a triad. We hit it off and started playing a lot together. That opened up a whole new world I had never known existed."
In 1972, the band released their first and— until 2002's Now Again— only album, but have appeared together on each other's albums. Since the band's initial break-up just after their first album was cut, the three musicians have followed individual paths.
, was released in 1977.
The following year, his band played London, where he met punk rock
group The Clash
. Impressed with each other's performances, the two bands would later tour together, including appearances in Ely's hometown of Lubbock, as well as Laredo
and Ciudad Juárez
in Mexico, across the border from El Paso, Texas
. Ely sang backing vocals on the Clash single "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" , and Joe Strummer
performed as a guest with Ely's band. Another collaboration was with Dutch flamenco
guitarist Teye
, with whom he recorded Letter to Laredo (1995) and Twistin' in the Wind (1998).
Throughout his career, Ely has issued a steady stream of albums, most on the MCA
label, and a live album roughly every ten years.
The Joe Ely Band song "Brainlock" was featured in the 1980 movie Roadie starring Meat Loaf, Alice Cooper, Don Cornelius and Kaki Hunter.
In the late 1990s Ely was asked to write songs for the soundtrack of Robert Redford
's movie The Horse Whisperer
, which led to re-forming The Flatlanders
with Gilmore and Hancock. A new album from the trio followed in 2002, with a third in 2004.
In February 2007, Ely released Happy Songs From Rattlesnake Gulch on his own label, Rack 'Em Records. Ely said in an interview with Country Standard Time
that he thought it would be easier to release the material on his own label instead of dealing with a regular record label and their release cycles. A book of Ely's writings, Bonfire of Roadmaps, was published in early 2007 by the University of Texas Press
. In early 2008, Ely released a new live album featuring Joel Guzman on accordion
recorded at the Cactus Cafe in Austin, Texas late 2006.
The Flatlanders
released their newest album "Hills and Valleys" on March 31, 2009.
Texas Country
Texas country music is a rapidly growing sub-genre of American country music. Texas country is known for fusing traditionalist root sounds with the outspoken, care-free views of outlaw country...
, Tex-Mex
Tejano music
Tejano music or Tex-Mex music is the name given to various forms of folk and popular music originating among the Mexican-American populations of Central and Southern Texas...
and rock and roll
Rock and roll
Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of African American blues, country, jazz, and gospel music...
.
He has had a genre-crossing career, performing with Bruce Springsteen
Bruce Springsteen
Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen , nicknamed "The Boss," is an American singer-songwriter who records and tours with the E Street Band...
, Uncle Tupelo
Uncle Tupelo
Uncle Tupelo was an alternative country music group from Belleville, Illinois, active between 1987 and 1994. Jay Farrar, Jeff Tweedy, and Mike Heidorn formed the band after the lead singer of their previous band, The Primitives, left to attend college. The trio recorded three albums for Rockville...
, Los Super Seven
Los Super Seven
Los Super Seven is a predominantly Latin American supergroup which debuted in 1998. The group won a Grammy Award for Best Mexican/Mexican-American Album in 1999 for its self-titled album. The group's musical style has changed with each incarnation, blending sounds from Tejano, mariachi, Cuban,...
, The Clancy Brothers
The Clancy Brothers
The Clancy Brothers were an influential Irish folk music singing group, most popular in the 1960s, they were famed for their woolly Aran jumpers and are widely credited with popularizing Irish traditional music in the United States. The brothers were Patrick "Paddy" Clancy, Tom Clancy, Bobby Clancy...
and James McMurtry
James McMurtry
James McMurtry is a Texas rock/Texas Country singer, songwriter, guitarist, bandleader and occasional actor...
in addition to his early work with The Clash
The Clash
The Clash were an English punk rock band that formed in 1976 as part of the original wave of British punk. Along with punk, their music incorporated elements of reggae, ska, dub, funk, rap, dance, and rockabilly...
and more recent acoustic tours with Lyle Lovett
Lyle Lovett
Lyle Pearce Lovett is an American singer-songwriter and actor. Active since 1980, he has recorded thirteen albums and released 21 singles to date, including his highest entry, the number 10 chart hit on the U.S. Billboard Hot Country Songs chart, "Cowboy Man"...
, John Hiatt
John Hiatt
John Hiatt is an American rock guitarist, pianist, singer, and songwriter. He has played a variety of musical styles on his albums, including New Wave, blues and country. Hiatt has been nominated for several Grammy Awards - although he has never won- and has been awarded a variety of other...
, and Guy Clark
Guy Clark
Guy Clark is an American Texas Country artist. In his career, he has released more than twenty albums, primarily on major labels. He has also written singles for other artists, including Ricky Skaggs, Steve Wariner and Rodney Crowell....
.
Early life and career
Ely spent his formative years from age 12 in Lubbock, TexasLubbock, Texas
Lubbock is a city in and the county seat of Lubbock County, Texas, United States. The city is located in the northwestern part of the state, a region known historically as the Llano Estacado, and the home of Texas Tech University and Lubbock Christian University...
and attended Monterey High School
Monterey High School (Lubbock, Texas)
Monterey High School is a 5A high school located in central Lubbock, Texas, United States. Monterey is part of the Lubbock Independent School District. Established in 1955, Monterey was the third high school to be established in Lubbock, after Lubbock High School and Dunbar High School...
.
In 1970, with fellow Lubbock musicians Jimmie Dale Gilmore
Jimmie Dale Gilmore
Jimmie Dale Gilmore is a country singer, songwriter, actor, recording artist and producer, currently living in Austin, Texas.-Biography:...
and Butch Hancock
Butch Hancock
Butch Hancock is a country/folk music recording artist and song writer. He was born July 12, 1945 in Lubbock, Texas. Hancock is a member of The Flatlanders along with Joe Ely and Jimmie Dale Gilmore, but he has principally performed a solo career....
, he formed The Flatlanders
The Flatlanders
The Flatlanders are a country band with considerable country rock influence from Lubbock, Texas founded by singers/songwriters/guitarists Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Joe Ely, and Butch Hancock....
. According to Ely, "Jimmie [Gilmore] was like a well of country music. He knew everything about it. And Butch was from the folk world. I was kinda the rock & roll guy, and we almost had a triad. We hit it off and started playing a lot together. That opened up a whole new world I had never known existed."
In 1972, the band released their first and— until 2002's Now Again— only album, but have appeared together on each other's albums. Since the band's initial break-up just after their first album was cut, the three musicians have followed individual paths.
Solo career
Ely's own first, self titled albumJoe Ely (album)
Joe Ely is the self-titled debut album by Joe Ely, released in 1977 on MCA Records. The album includes several tracks with "near-classic" status among Ely fans, including several written by Ely's bandmates from The Flatlanders...
, was released in 1977.
The following year, his band played London, where he met punk rock
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
group The Clash
The Clash
The Clash were an English punk rock band that formed in 1976 as part of the original wave of British punk. Along with punk, their music incorporated elements of reggae, ska, dub, funk, rap, dance, and rockabilly...
. Impressed with each other's performances, the two bands would later tour together, including appearances in Ely's hometown of Lubbock, as well as Laredo
Laredo, Texas
Laredo is the county seat of Webb County, Texas, United States, located on the north bank of the Rio Grande in South Texas, across from Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, Mexico. According to the 2010 census, the city population was 236,091 making it the 3rd largest on the United States-Mexican border,...
and Ciudad Juárez
Ciudad Juárez
Ciudad Juárez , officially known today as Heroica Ciudad Juárez, but abbreviated Juárez and formerly known as El Paso del Norte, is a city and seat of the municipality of Juárez in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. Juárez's estimated population is 1.5 million people. The city lies on the Rio Grande...
in Mexico, across the border from El Paso, Texas
El Paso, Texas
El Paso, is a city in and the county seat of El Paso County, Texas, United States, and lies in far West Texas. In the 2010 census, the city had a population of 649,121. It is the sixth largest city in Texas and the 19th largest city in the United States...
. Ely sang backing vocals on the Clash single "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" , and Joe Strummer
Joe Strummer
John Graham Mellor , best remembered by his stage name Joe Strummer, was the co-founder, lyricist, rhythm guitarist and lead vocalist of the British punk rock band The Clash. His musical experience included his membership in The 101ers, Latino Rockabilly War, The Mescaleros and The Pogues, in...
performed as a guest with Ely's band. Another collaboration was with Dutch flamenco
Flamenco
Flamenco is a genre of music and dance which has its foundation in Andalusian music and dance and in whose evolution Andalusian Gypsies played an important part....
guitarist Teye
Teye
Teye is a Dutch guitarist, best known for his flamenco guitar work with the Joe Ely band between 1994 and 2000, and for his flamenco ensembles 'Teye & Viva el Flamenco' and 'Teye & Belen'.- Biography :...
, with whom he recorded Letter to Laredo (1995) and Twistin' in the Wind (1998).
Throughout his career, Ely has issued a steady stream of albums, most on the MCA
Music Corporation of America
MCA, Inc. was an American talent agency. Initially starting in the music business, they would next become a dominant force in the film business, and later expanded into the television business...
label, and a live album roughly every ten years.
The Joe Ely Band song "Brainlock" was featured in the 1980 movie Roadie starring Meat Loaf, Alice Cooper, Don Cornelius and Kaki Hunter.
In the late 1990s Ely was asked to write songs for the soundtrack of Robert Redford
Robert Redford
Charles Robert Redford, Jr. , better known as Robert Redford, is an American actor, film director, producer, businessman, environmentalist, philanthropist, and founder of the Sundance Film Festival. He has received two Oscars: one in 1981 for directing Ordinary People, and one for Lifetime...
's movie The Horse Whisperer
The Horse Whisperer
The Horse Whisperer is a 1998 American drama film directed by and starring Robert Redford, based on the 1995 novel of the same name by Nicholas Evans...
, which led to re-forming The Flatlanders
The Flatlanders
The Flatlanders are a country band with considerable country rock influence from Lubbock, Texas founded by singers/songwriters/guitarists Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Joe Ely, and Butch Hancock....
with Gilmore and Hancock. A new album from the trio followed in 2002, with a third in 2004.
In February 2007, Ely released Happy Songs From Rattlesnake Gulch on his own label, Rack 'Em Records. Ely said in an interview with Country Standard Time
Country Standard Time
Country Standard Time is a website dedicated to country music and related genres such as Bluegrass and Rockabilly. It provides news and musical reviews pertaining to the genre. It was established in 1992 by Jeffrey B. Remz as a print magazine, which was first published only in New England but went...
that he thought it would be easier to release the material on his own label instead of dealing with a regular record label and their release cycles. A book of Ely's writings, Bonfire of Roadmaps, was published in early 2007 by the University of Texas Press
University of Texas Press
The University of Texas Press is a university press that is part of the University of Texas at Austin. Established in 1950, the Press publishes scholarly books in several areas, including Latin American studies, Texana, anthropology, U.S...
. In early 2008, Ely released a new live album featuring Joel Guzman on accordion
Accordion
The accordion is a box-shaped musical instrument of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone family, sometimes referred to as a squeezebox. A person who plays the accordion is called an accordionist....
recorded at the Cactus Cafe in Austin, Texas late 2006.
The Flatlanders
The Flatlanders
The Flatlanders are a country band with considerable country rock influence from Lubbock, Texas founded by singers/songwriters/guitarists Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Joe Ely, and Butch Hancock....
released their newest album "Hills and Valleys" on March 31, 2009.
Albums
| Year | Album | Chart Positions | Label | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US Country | US Billboard 200 The Billboard 200 is a ranking of the 200 highest-selling music albums and EPs in the United States, published weekly by Billboard magazine. It is frequently used to convey the popularity of an artist or groups of artists... |
US Heat Top Heatseekers Top Heatseekers refers to either of two separate "Breaking and Entering" music charts issued weekly by Billboard Magazine: the Heatseekers Albums chart or the Heatseekers Songs chart. They were introduced by Billboard in 1993 with the purpose of highlighting the sales by new and developing musical... |
|||
| 1977 | Joe Ely Joe Ely (album) Joe Ely is the self-titled debut album by Joe Ely, released in 1977 on MCA Records. The album includes several tracks with "near-classic" status among Ely fans, including several written by Ely's bandmates from The Flatlanders... |
MCA | |||
| 1978 | Honky Tonk Masquerade Honky Tonk Masquerade Honky Tonk Masquerade is the second album by country singer-songwriter Joe Ely, released in 1978.- Critical acclaim :Ely's second album has been highly regarded by critics around the world. It was included in the 2005 book, 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die... |
||||
| 1979 | Down on the Drag | ||||
| 1980 | Live Shots Live Shots Live Shots is a live album recorded in London by American country outfit The Joe Ely Band during a 1980 tour supporting The Clash. The tour occurred at a high point in The Clash's popularity just after the release of the album, London Calling.... |
159 | |||
| 1981 | Musta Notta Gotta Lotta | 135 | |||
| 1984 | Hi-Res | 204 | |||
| 1987 | Lord of the Highway | Hightone | |||
| 1988 | Dig All Night | ||||
| Milkshakes and Malts | Sunstorm | ||||
| What Ever Happened to Maria | |||||
| 1990 | Live at Liberty Lunch | 57 | MCA | ||
| 1993 | Love and Danger | ||||
| 1995 | Chippy Chippy (album) Chippy, also known as Songs from "Chippy", is an album by Terry Allen, Joe Ely, Butch Hancock, Robert Earl Keen, Wayne Hancock, Jo Harvey Allen and Jo Carol Pierce... |
Hollywood | |||
| Letter to Laredo | 68 | MCA | |||
| 1998 | Live at Cambridge | Strange Fruit | |||
| Twistin' in the Wind | 55 | MCA | |||
| 2000 | Live @ Antones | 66 | Antones | ||
| 2003 | Streets of Sin | 51 | Rounder | ||
| Ten in Texas | Icehouse | ||||
| 2007 | Happy Songs from Rattlesnake Gulch | Rack 'Em Records | |||
| Silver City | |||||
| 2008 | LIVE Cactus! (with Joel Guzmán) | ||||
| 2009 | LIVE Chicago 1987! | ||||
| 2011 | Satisfied At Last | 46 | 18 |
Singles
| Year | Single | Peak chart positions |
Album | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US Country Hot Country Songs Hot Country Songs is a chart published weekly by Billboard magazine in the United States.This 60-position chart lists the most popular country music songs, calculated weekly mostly by airplay and occasionally commercial sales... |
US MSR Mainstream Rock Tracks Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks is a ranking in Billboard magazine of the most-played songs on mainstream rock radio stations, a category that includes stations that play primarily rock music. Modern rock tracks are counted in the Alternative Songs chart.This chart began with the March 21, 1981, issue... |
|||
| 1977 | "All My Love" | 89 | — | Joe Ely |
| 1981 | "Musta Notta Gotta Lotta" | — | 40 | Musta Notta Gotta Lotta |
| 1993 | "Highways and Heartaches" | — | — | Love and Danger |
| 2011 | "You Can Bet I'm Gone" | — | — | Satisfied at Last |
| "—" denotes releases that did not chart | ||||
Guest singles
| Year | Single | Artist | Peak positions | Album |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US Country Hot Country Songs Hot Country Songs is a chart published weekly by Billboard magazine in the United States.This 60-position chart lists the most popular country music songs, calculated weekly mostly by airplay and occasionally commercial sales... |
||||
| 1992 | "Sweet Suzanne" | Buzzin' Cousins | 68 | Falling from Grace soundtrack |
Music videos
| Year | Video | Director |
|---|---|---|
| 1993 | "Highways and Heartaches" | Deaton-Flanigen |
External links
- JoeEly.com - Official home page
- Joe Ely feature and CD reviews] at Country Standard Time
- http://www.virtualubbock.com/stoJHughes_ElvisBuddyJoe.html